The College of Communications Arts
at Michigan State University was
confronted with a challenge any educational
institution would love to face, a
donation for the specific use of turning a
general meeting room at the entrance to
the Comm. Arts building into a state of
the art, multi purpose video conference
facility.

Richard Tibbals, CAS Information
Technology Manager began the process
of selecting the equipment that would
outfit this room, which would be utilized
for a variety of purposes. It would continue
to be used for receptions, general
meetings, and administrative meetings,
but would also be readied for distance
learning, video conferencing, and interviews
for broadcast on the University’s
television station WKAR.

To meet these requirements, the room
was equipped with an interactive video
board, a touch panel allowing operation
of equipment from a projected computer
menu on the screens, satellite, cable TV,
DVD, videotape playback, a video projector
and surround audio.

With the sophistication level of equipment
being installed, lighting became a
critical issue. Lighting in the room consisted
of recessed troffers and a row of
down lights surrounding the room.
Installing effective light for the camera,
while providing quality illumination to
the presenters and attendees in the room,
was critical. The Chief Engineer of
WKAR, Mr. Gary Blievernicht, recommended
researching Videssence and their
new fixture developed for distance learning
applications, the Softlite.

The Edward Deeb Conference Room was
opened on January 20th, 2002 to rave reviews.

“Everyone who has seen a demonstration of the room has been very
impressed with the evenness of light produced from the Videssence fixtures.
This uniformity of light allows us to utilize a variety of set-ups in the
space. And the color temperature is exact to the camera’s needs.”
—Richard Tibbals, C AS Information Technology Manager

The Videssence Softlite is a recessed 2x2 fixtures, which provides even vertical illumination in three directions, while comfortably lighting the participants in the video. The indirect reflection of the fixture reduces lighting levels at the front of the space for good contrast at the monitor, while keeping direct light off the camera lens.

The classroom is approximately 21´
by 24´ with a dropped ceiling height of
10´. Videssence generated a point by
point analysis to determine the exact
number and placement of fixtures
required to attain proper lighting levels
within the room. Nine Videssence
Softlites, SL110-255BX.120, were
installed in the grid, three rows of three.
Each row of Videssence lights was
dimmed on a separate circuit to allow
adjustment of lighting during multimedia
presentations. The incandescent
down lights were left around the perimeter
of the room to add esthetic lighting
when required for receptions and other
non-video meetings.